(August 25, 2015 at 5:13 am)robvalue Wrote: Assumption: God created everything.

Evidence: There is stuff.

Conclusion: God created this stuff (using the assumption), thus confirming the assumption.

Assumption: God created everything.

Evidence: There is stuff.

Conclusion: My religion is right and everybody else is wrong.

We've been bamboozeled. Was not the op question how theist get to the final conclusion from the original assumption? So they keep the discussion stuck on proving the original assumption as if that will automatically prove the final conclusion.

Thee must be a name for this kind of fallacy. drippyism? Gcesque? chadified? orangelated?

And not just any god. A god that has human attributes. Theists love anthropomorphism so much.

(August 26, 2015 at 6:24 pm)Pizza Wrote: And not just any god. A god that has human attributes. Theists love anthropomorphism so much.

They like being able to say god is beyond our understanding, but why create a god who is actually ineffable?

Rhonda, they linger longer that way...

Knowledge of religion has more to duty with knowledge of what it means to be human and our purpose thereof. Our relationship to God is of the identity we have as humans.

The true religion comes to fulfill our nature and calls to our nature.

Atheists don't even recognize they are a soul. So how will they remember and recall the higher purpose, the tree of life/light, and so on an so forth.

How will they see the face of God/name of God? They are in denial from the believers perspective. They take every spiritual knowledge as a mockery and deny it's existence in humans or fail to recognize it in themselves.

This is while they rely on it when valuing people for their actions for example.

(August 25, 2015 at 2:42 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(August 25, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Sure, and that's great to speculate, also it's very interesting to think about what's out there. And even what's in here in our twisted little minds. For example, did you consider the vast expanse of space inside our atoms? It seems like the more we zoom in, in the more the scenery begins to resemble the vast expanse of outer space!

Agreed.  I think it is less intuitive to think of space as having either an upper or lower limit of scale.  Having the means to image beyond a certain level is not a reason to set aside this basic intuition.

(August 25, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Either way, we have to go on living. Should I get up this morning? Why? Why do good when its more convenient to do evil?

Surely you do not think it might be more convenient to do evil if only you could elude the long arm of the god?  Do you find yourself beset by evil impulses which you must constantly be on guard against?  I don't.  Caring about others is in our nature, going against that should be hard.

(August 25, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Are there good and evil? And who is to define it?.... We need answers to these now, and science might be great for that, the only problem is that it is very very SLOOOOW. And our lives are short.

I don't think science has any role to play where morality is concerned.  More often, science provides us with more power to do incidental or unintended harm.  If or when we ever reach moral agreement and achieve the political conviction to something about it, science may help us match means to ends.  But morally, science is neutral.

(August 25, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Ronkonkoma Wrote: So we do in fact need philosophy to answer these. Philosophy is supposed to be reasonable. Reason is a tool we have other than science. Religion itself should be reasonable, and it should fit with science.

Couldn't agree more with the part I bolded.  I personally get bored discussing religion with apologists who think they have to explain away bits of science as being in conflict with their theology.  Evolution should pose no problem.  Big bangs should pose no problem.  And neither should a multiverse or abiogenesis pose an obstacle to an adequate theology.

I do think there is a reason for God belief and I don't oppose it even though I don't embrace it either.  At the very least how and why it arises nearly everywhere and at all times makes it an interesting question.

"Only a mind is going to get it right. A mindless process can make the planet [Earth] quickly and permanently sterile."

-- Astrophysicist Hugh Ross.

The reason we have the appearance of so many religions, creation stories and deities is because we live in a universe that fills us with wonder and we sense that there is a huge world beyond our comprehension. This is especially true of early civilizations that were more exposed to nature. When was the last time I saw the milky way? But Abraham probably contemplated on it every night. Either way, there is a reaching out towards the divine on the part of humanity. Either through the archaic religions and philosophies, and more recently through science. You can see this when Stephen Hawkins concludes there is a high likelihood of aliens existing in outer space with much greater intelligence than ours.

And seeing mankind reaching out, what do you think the Creator did? Turn a blind eye?

So Stephen Hawkins would even recommend preparing for this dreadful day of our encounter with aliens, that will likely mean disaster for our civilization. There are even pseudo-scientists who suggests that an encounter already happened. They say the Pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens. Either way, you would think we would have heard more of it, it would have been etched in the psyche of human beings, our calendar would have been completely altered. Armies would have been mobilized... But there are those who think all this already happened at a certain location some 2000 years ago. Some 45 miles northeast of Gaza and the Mediterranean Sea, 47 mi west of Amman Jordan, 37 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, 6.2 miles south of Jerusalem. They think, being the primitive and backwards beings that we are, the encounter turned out disastrous for the visitor. Kings and rulers persecuted him from the day he was born into our cruel world.  Our calendar was split in two (BC and AD). Crosses are raised all over the world to remember the unwelcome Creator. The One beyond space and time, who was so infinitely powerful to become one of us. A limp infant crying under the stars.The Alpha and the Omega. Born in a manger for cattle because there was no room for Him elsewhere.

Ain't it funny to see the conflicting versions of word salad, eh?

(August 26, 2015 at 9:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Knowledge of religion has more to duty with knowledge of what it means to be human and our purpose thereof. Our relationship to God is of the identity we have as humans.

What is 'god'? Give me a definition that is not a word salad, and I'll begin to try to take you seriously.

(August 26, 2015 at 9:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: The true religion comes to fulfill our nature and calls to our nature.

And that would be?

(August 26, 2015 at 9:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Atheists don't even recognize they are a soul. So how will they remember and recall the higher purpose, the tree of life/light, and so on an so forth.

See mate, the problem is that "Atheists" (who, by the way, might believe in a soul) generally don't like to believe in things without a reason. What is a soul? What is it made of? Does it interact with the material world? If it does, how can we measure its activity based on its interactions with the material world? If it doesn't, what does it explain that can't be better explained by a materialist solution?

(August 26, 2015 at 9:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: How will they see the face of God/name of God? They are in denial from the believers perspective. They take every spiritual knowledge as a mockery and deny it's existence in humans or fail to recognize it in themselves.

The problem with your view is that you seem to think that unbelief is a "fault" of the unbeliever. I, on the other hand, think that such an evident god would be pretty easy to believe in, if it existed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(August 26, 2015 at 9:11 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: This is while they rely on it when valuing people for their actions for example.

Relying on what exactly? When I trust somebody with doing something, for example, I do it because I *know* them, I *know* what they're like, and because I *know* they exist. From the unbeliever's point of view, one might say you're in denial...

(August 27, 2015 at 2:20 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: [...] You can see this when Stephen Hawkins concludes there is a high likelihood of aliens existing in outer space with much greater intelligence than ours.

And seeing mankind reaching out, what do you think the Creator did? Turn a blind eye?

So Stephen Hawkins [...]

Who the f*** is Stephen Hawkins?

Lol

You see - how can anything you say be taken seriously, if you don't even know the guy's name?... Read a book some time. No - not the bible...

Hawkins?

Shipping scientists..... Welcome to the internet ._.